Make sure you have a Mas­ter’s De­gree if you want to be­come Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er or Deputy Com­mis­sion­er in the fu­ture.

That’s what Gov­ern­ment be­lieves is need­ed for the job (apart from oth­er re­quire­ments) af­ter Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved this cri­te­ria for the posts. Act­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds de­tailed the up­grad­ed cri­te­ria at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

Cab­i­net al­so for­malised sev­er­al po­lice units in­clud­ing to han­dle is­sues at schools and to han­dle gen­der-based vi­o­lence con­cern­ing women and chil­dren.

On the new cri­te­ria for top CoPs, Hinds said the Po­lice Ser­vice is re­brand­ing to­wards be­com­ing a world-class or­gan­i­sa­tion and is ex­am­in­ing an im­proved man­age­ment sys­tem, ac­count­abil­i­ty and per­for­mance mea­sure­ments.

New skillsets are there­fore re­quired to do this, as un­earthed by the Man­pow­er Au­dit re­port which Gov­ern­ment had com­mis­sioned, and is now be­ing ac­ti­vat­ed in the po­lice ser­vice.

Not­ing deputy COPs act as Com­mis­sion­er from time to time, Hinds added, “Cab­i­net (yes­ter­day) ap­proved the up­grade of the job spec­i­fi­ca­tion for the post of COP and deputy COP in par­tic­u­lar to that re­quire­ment of a Mas­ter’s De­gree as pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion for hold­ing those of­fices ..the post of COP and deputy COP will be held by those per­sons, go­ing for­ward, with a ba­sic re­quire­ment of a min­i­mum of a Mas­ter’s De­gree.”

The up­grad­ed cri­te­ria re­place the cur­rent re­quire­ment of a de­gree. Per­sons with a Mas­ter’s in law en­force­ment would have an edge over oth­ers with this de­gree in oth­er fields.

Ap­pro­pri­ate salary will be dealt with by the agency that han­dles such is­sues, he added. The pro­pos­al for the qual­i­fi­ca­tion came from the po­lice via the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry. Hinds con­firmed cur­rent Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has a Mas­ter’s De­gree.

Based on oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions of the Man­pow­er Au­dit, Hinds said Cab­i­net al­so for­malised a White Col­lar Crime Unit, the cur­rent al­ready-ac­tive Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT), a Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit to in­crease the de­tec­tion rate, a Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit (for is­sues con­cern­ing women and chil­dren) and a School Ser­vices Unit.

In Sep­tem­ber 2018, Grif­fith had an­nounced the School Ser­vices Unit would be formed. It will tack­le chal­lenges in schools es­pe­cial­ly con­cern­ing stu­dents com­ing to and from class­es. Hinds couldn’t say if the po­lice would be armed, but he con­firmed the team would be a blend of po­lice and coun­sel­lors. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said a meet­ing will be held very soon with Grif­fith about the unit.

Apart from the White Col­lar crime unit, Cab­i­net al­so agreed that per­sons charged with fraud and fi­nan­cial white-col­lar crimes will no longer be able to seek re­course to leg­is­la­tion which had al­lowed peo­ple to ac­cess court to have mat­ters thrown out if the pros­e­cu­tion hadn’t start­ed in 10 years.

Hinds al­so con­firmed that the 100 mem­ber T&T con­tin­gent of sol­diers who’d been as­sist­ing the Ba­hamas fol­low­ing hur­ri­cane Do­ri­an, will re­turn next Mon­day.